Sprinting Across Greece

When we decide to go, we can get a move on. Granny Sharon is arriving in Tuscany in mid April and we want to get there. Unfortunately there’s some 900 miles to go before we get there. So, we’d better get a move on.

The weather looked fabulous (well for us powerboaters it looked good, not too much wind) so we powered from Marmaris to Simi and bunkered with fuel. Simi’s fuel prices are reasonable, or at least a lot more reasonable than in Turkey, so we filled both tanks – about 600 Euros or $1000 worth of fuel.

Ouch, but by buying it in Simi instead of Marmaris we saved 150 Euros. We had our normal runaround checking into the country – Police, Customs, Port Police, Police, Port Police and they’re arranged around the harbour as far as possible from each other. It’s about a 2 to 3 hours procedure to get into the country.

But Simi is a special place for us – where we met the Pantons -- David, Tina, Bimi and her friend Claudia there, so we have a special place in our hearts for Simi. From Simi we did several long days in a row to get across Greece.

Simi to Astipalaia 65

Astipalaia to Paros 73

Paros to Kythnos 55

Kythnos to Poros 45

Poros to the Corinth Canal 40

Corinth to Nisos Trizonia 55

Nisos Trizonia to Messalongia 35

Messalongia to Kefalonia 70

 So in the span of 8 days we managed to go from Turkey to the stepping-off point to sail to Sicily or about 450 nautical miles. That doesn’t sound like very far but if you divide by 7.5 knots you end up with about 60 hours of travel time … and that’s about 7 hours a day on average.